


surely i was sinful from birth

by pippuri



Category: Supernatural
Genre: ANOTHER sam character study ....... i can't stop :)), Character Study, Gen, takes place the summer after sam learns that monsters are Real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27491026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pippuri/pseuds/pippuri
Summary: ever since dean told you what dad really does, you’ve been terrified all the time. you got suspended three times from your last school for bringing a knife in your backpack, and dean thinks it’s funny how jumpy you’ve gotten. so you try to read as much as you can; learn as much as you can. you've always been good at school, but you’ll realize much later that it becomes something closer to an obsession. that if you read enough, learn enough, you’ll be able to keep the monsters at bay.//pre-show, sam's first encounter with a demon
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	surely i was sinful from birth

**Author's Note:**

> thank u bry for proofreading this

The summer after fourth grade, Dad has you and Dean baptized. You’ve been living in a decrepit farmhouse in rural New Hampshire, while Dad hunts something that’s been causing perfectly healthy men to collapse, dead and bloody. Dean helps him sometimes, tagging along on stakeouts in the middle of the night, leaving you to sit awake in bed all night until you can hear the roar of Dad’s car in the driveway. 

It’s not until mid-July that he figures out what it is. 

Or rather, when you figure out what it is. You spend half your waking hours camped out in the local library, speed-reading books and winning certificates for free pizzas through the summer reading program. The librarian thought you were lying, but after you pass her quiz on _Watership Down_ , she reluctantly hands over the coupons every time you return another stack of books. It’s in a dusty history of the township that you find an answer -- just a couple paragraphs about an old legend, of a monster called Mephistopheles that the early settlers brought with them from the old country. The book phrases it like an oddity, like an old world superstition clinging on in the new world, but you know better now. 

Ever since Dean told you what Dad _really_ does, you’ve been terrified all the time. You got suspended three times from your last school for bringing a knife in your backpack, and Dean thinks it’s funny how jumpy you’ve gotten. So you try to read as much as you can; learn as much as you can. You’ve always been good at school, but you’ll realize much later that it becomes something closer to an obsession. That if you read enough, learn enough, you’ll be able to keep the monsters at bay. 

You run almost all the way home, clutching the book tight to your chest, and Dad’s face gets white and still when he reads the pages you’ve bookmarked. He just grabs Dean by the arm from where he’s sprawled out on the couch, watching cartoons, and hustles you both into the car. 

“It’s a demon,” Dad says shortly. “There aren’t many around anymore, but Jim always said it was a possibility.” Dean’s looking at Dad, his mouth open. 

“Like _The Exorcist_?” He says, and you swear he sounds excited. 

Dad hears it too, because he glares at him. “This isn’t a joke, Dean. Demons can’t be killed, can’t be hurt. You won’t be laughing when you’re bleeding out in a basement somewhere before you even start high school.” 

“No, sir,” Dean says quietly, and you stare out the window until the whole world around you blurs. You know better than to ask where you’re going—Dad will tell you when he thinks it’s necessary. 

He finally pulls up outside of a church. It’s one of the churches they only seem to have in small New England towns, and you prefer it to the strip mall church where Dad made you go to free Bible summer school every day last summer to keep you busy while he was on a business trip. Now that you know about monsters, he keeps you busy in other ways, training alongside Dean from sunrise. He leaves you and Dean in the car, and walks to the parsonage house next door, slamming on the door until a woman opens it, looking slightly confused. 

You can’t hear them, but you can imagine the conversation—Dad telling some lie to get her to agree to whatever insane thing he wants this time, the woman hesitant but wanting to be helpful, Dad adding some bit of truth to the story, maybe about Mom, until the woman agrees. 

Dad finally turns, shading his eyes against the sun, and gestures for you and Dean to come join him. Dean pushes you out of the car, and you almost trip over your own feet. 

“Your dad says you and your brother are going on a big trip, and your grandma wants you both baptized before you fly,” the woman says kindly. “Must be exciting to go on vacation!” 

Dean nods eagerly, but you just kick at the dirt, scuffing your new hand-me-down sneakers. Dad looks at you over the woman’s shoulder, and you reluctantly nod. 

“Where are you two headed, anyways?” She asks as she leads you towards the side door of the church. 

“Disneyland,” Dean says, right as you say “I dunno,” and she looks somewhat confused. Dad has his hand on your shoulder, and is practically pushing you forward. 

“It’s a surprise,” Dad says. “I think Dean is hoping for Disney,” and he squeezes your shoulder so tight it hurts a little. 

“Sam’s scared of the costumes,” Dean says, and raises his eyebrows at you, daring you to fight him back. 

That’s the rule of lying, Dad taught you. Don’t question anything anyone else says, just go with the flow of it. It was easier when you thought you were lying about how often you move around; not when you were lying about monsters and demons. 

The woman smiles at you, and leans down a little, whispering like she’s sharing some kind of big secret. “To tell you the truth, Sammy, I’ve always been a little scared of the costumes too.” You want to laugh, but you make yourself nod. She doesn’t know what you’ve seen; doesn’t know the way that monsters crowd into the dark corners of every room. 

She fills a small basin with water, and beckons for Dean to join her. “If you two came back on Sunday, we could baptize you in the river like we do with all of our young people,” and she points to the slow, lazy river winding its way behind the church. Dad shakes his head, and there’s that stillness to him that you’re not used to. He’s scared, you realize. Dad’s _scared_ , and maybe he’s getting you baptized so you can go to Heaven when the demon kills you or kills Dean. Suddenly, you want to run out of the church, run into the river and let it carry you far, far, far away. You don’t want to _die_. 

Before you really realize it, Dean is back next to you, and even though Pastor Young last summer had said that baptism would make you _different_ , make you _saved_ , Dean just looks the same, his hair damp and sticking to his forehead. 

“Your turn, Sam,” and the woman beckons you. You just stare. Dad shoves you forward a little, and you stumble to where the woman is standing. _This won’t work for you, you know_ . The thought fills your head, until you can’t really think of anything else. _This won’t work for you_ , and you don’t know where it came from. It’s the same feeling you used to get when you were little, when you told Dad that you didn’t feel good and he couldn’t seem to understand that it wasn’t a cold or something. That it was like a fever, deep under your skin, making you hot and sick and wrong. _This won’t work for you, you know_. The woman smiles gently at you, and brings her cupped hands, full of water to the top of your head. 

“I baptize you, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” she says, and the water is cool when it runs down your cheeks. She makes a sign of the cross right in the center of your forehead, and you almost tell her, _This won’t work, you know_ , but bite your tongue before it can come out. 

/

Dad is silent for almost the whole car ride back to the house, and he doesn’t even yell at Dean when he begs to stop at McDonald’s, just glares at him in the rearview mirror. You can feel the water trickling down the back of your neck. 

“I don’t feel good,” you say, too quietly for anyone except Dean to hear. He looks at you, and you feel like you’re a little kid again, and you hate it. 

“Dad, pull the car over,” Dean says loudly, “Sam’s gonna puke.” 

You don’t though—you try, but nothing comes up, and your mouth tastes sharp and coppery, like blood. Distantly, you know Dean is kneeling besides you, his hand on your back, pressing the thin streams of holy water into your skin, whispering “It’s okay, Sammy,” over and over. 

“I don’t feel good,” you say again, and Dean nods, like he understands. He doesn’t though. He can’t ever, because there is something sick inside you, something you have no words for. You know it like you know the sun will rise tomorrow, and like you know that Dean is the only person in the whole world you can trust; it’s just true. 

/

Dad exorcises the demon on a Thursday night, right in the middle of the kitchen where Dean had made you mac and cheese for dinner. He makes you help, shows you the way that handcuffs dipped in holy water will hold the demon long enough to send it back from wherever it came from, explains how the baptism made your body too holy for the demon to enter it. Your eyes must be playing tricks on you, because the demon looks right at you and _smiles_ when Dad says that. 

The exorcism is nothing like from the movie that Dean made you watch on the grainy TV that the previous tenants left behind. There’s no Latin, no speaking in tongues. Just Dad placing his hand on the demon’s forehead, forces your hand flat on the demon’s shoulder blade, Dean’s hand on its upper arm. The demon came from Germany, came hidden away inside the mind of some long-dead immigrant, and Bobby had to help Dad with the exorcism’s pronunciation. It’s a unique exorcism, Bobby had told you over the phone. This demon is somewhere between a legend and a monster, and the traditional Catholic rite would be as useful as a shotgun. 

“ _Wahrlich, wahrlich ich sage euch_ ,” Dad says, and the foreign words crawl into your head, another layer of protection against the things that hunt you, “ _so ihr den Vater etwas bitten werdet in meinem Namen, so wird er's euch geben._ ” The demon twitches, and Dad holds your hand _hard_ against its back, so you can feel the muscles tense and shudder under your palm. It twists its head around, just far enough that you know it's not human, and looks you dead in the eye. 

“See you soon, Sammy,” it says, rough and unnatural, and Dad just crushes your hand harder and harder into it and then suddenly: the man collapses, black smoke rushing out of his eyes and disappearing. 

It’s just a man now. He’s dead, and Dean’s staring at you in horror. 

“Dad,” he says, “Dad, why’d it know Sam’s name?”

Your hand hurts, and you can feel where Dad’s fingers dug into your skin. It might bruise, and you ball your hands in the sleeves of your sweatshirt. 

“Dad?” Dean says again, backing away like you’re something he’s afraid of. Dad grabs Dean by the shoulder, forcing him to stay, leans down over the empty body. 

“You will not repeat a word of what happened here, _ever_ , Dean. Do you understand me?” 

“Yes sir,” Dean says quietly, his eyes flickering between you and the body. 

“Not even to Pastor Jim, not even to Bobby. Do you understand me, boy?” 

Dean nods, and twists himself free, running up the stairs to the bedroom you share. You know better than to ask; you know that even if Dad knows the answer, you don’t want to know. 

“Tell your brother to pack up,” Dad says. “We’re leaving first thing tomorrow morning. Got wind of a case down in Louisiana. A haunting, we can use it to help train you up.”

He offers it like a gift; all you want is to return your stack of books to the library. 

/

You dream of the demon. The way its neck cracks as it turns to look at you; the way it smiles at you like it knows a secret. _See you soon, Sammy_ , it says, as its face turns into Dean’s and into Dad’s and into your own. _See you soon_. 

You wake up before sunrise, watch Dad out the window of your bedroom as he burns something wrapped in the carpet that used to be on the living room floor. The kitchen is quiet now; no sign of what happened last night. Soon, other people will live here, watch TV sitting in your bed, and the librarian won’t even remember you. The slip of paper with the exorcism is still on the table, the English neatly next to the German. _Truly, truly, I say to you, if ye ask the Father anything in my name, he shall give it to you_. It doesn’t sound like an exorcism, you think. It sounds like a prayer, like something they would have on a poster at Bible summer school. 

You fold up the piece of paper, and tuck it in your pocket, sit at the table, wait for Dad to come in. You know this: the sun will rise; Dean will come downstairs, half asleep and with his duffel bag; and one day, the demons will come back for you. 

**Author's Note:**

> A NOTE because i went insane researching demons and lutheran exorcism rituals ... the exorcism that's in this comes from a 16th century account of an exorcism of a girl in wittenberg. the demon is also "real" ... mephistopheles is part of german folklore, and originates in the faust stories. in different intepretations, he either damns souls or is the one to collect the souls of men who are already damned.
> 
> as always love any & all comment :)


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